A Beginning

Gaurav Khare, one of our volunteers, wrote the following piece some time ago, when he had just joined Manorath. Couldn't resist sharing it. Read on. (You can find the original post here http://gauravkhare.com/blog/?p=329)

Beginning of a New Voyage

We live in a society which consists of vary different type of people. Differences can be there in the form of religion, cast or financial positions. I cannot envision my life without a farmer who is growing vegetables and fruits for us, delivery men of gas cylinder or news paper/milk or cleaning staff in our office premises. There are endless examples those we can list down here.

They all are doing their jobs to help us in living a better life. But do we ever think of the life they and more importantly their children live. What is the fault of a child who unknowingly and unintentionally born in a underprivileged family, off course there is no mistake they have made. So being a very important part of our civilization do they not deserve equal rights of proper food, education and other basic things. If we are reliant on them for the things which we cannot live without, Is not it our responsibility to help those children to get a better life?

I have been keeping these things in my mind since long and wanted to start doing something which can help the needy and deprived children. Finally the day came when I visited the office of CRY(Child Rights and You) an NGO working for children.

I attended their induction program and came to know the reason behind the name “CRY”, why they are following the philosophy of Child Rights and not of Child Relief. I got educated on the areas they look into, current projects and the way CRY works. After knowing all the important things I decided to join the group and started working.

Now I think that I have wasted many years without doing anything for this cause, but it’s never too late to start something really good. I don’t know, how long and how much will I be able to contribute, I am not sure how much my contribution will help those children. But I deeply trust that “Something is always better than nothing”.

Friends, We owe a lot to this society, so let’s join hands and do our part in return.

Homewards

Manorath is gearing up for a new activity this year. It is planning to impress upon the citizens of Delhi the significance of the rights of all children, especially the right to education. The adage goes that charity begins at home. Though we as a rights-based group don’t believe in charity (ask why), we are heading home – actually to residential colonies. There we will be conducting workshops on child rights. The planning and preparation have already begun. Permissions are being sought from various residential associations in the city.

If you want us to come to your colony, send us the contact details of your RWA. If you want to participate, book a seat in the volunteer orientation that happens on the first Sunday of every month. But before that make sure you contact the volunteer manager.

See you.

A Chance To Voice Child Rights

As you might have read in papers, a private school association in Rajasthan has filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Right To Education Act. Interestingly they have called it unconstitutional as the Act requires those schools to reserve 25% of their seats for children from poor economic background.

Read more about this in the following news links:
http://beta.thehindu.com/news/national/article267634.ece
http://news.indiainfo.com/article/100323132807_c-84-61223/974326.htmlhttp://www.zeenews.com/news613378.html

Manorath sent a letter to the HRD Ministry asking Mr. Sibal to not to succumb to this pressure from the private school lobby. We have decided to file an Intervention Application in the Supreme Court. We also initiated an online petition. The link to the petition is here.
http://www.petitiononline.com/mn111112/petition.html
If you support this cause, make yourself heard.
Your signature will also support the Intervention Application we are going to file.

Budget for Children: Some Food For Thought

By Tulika Sheel

Any budget analysis becomes pertinent only when it is set in the context of the situation of the group of persons it is meant for. What then is the situation of the children in India that needs to be addressed with “available resources”? More importantly, are the resources being allocated and spent “adequate”? Clearly not, if despite all its strides in the global market and its advances in GDP rankings, the current situation of the children in this country continues to be reflecting the following (data based on union government report):
India is home to the highest number of child laborers in the world
Out of every 100 children, 19 continue to be out of school: Of 81 who enroll, almost 53 % drop out before reaching Class VIII (Elementary level). Of every 100 children who are enrolled 70 drop out by the time they reach secondary level. Despite the promise of education for all, and non-discrimination being recognized as the basis of human rights, of every 100 children who drop out of school, 66 are girls; 46% children from scheduled tribes and 38 % from scheduled castes continue to be out of school as against 34% in the case of others. Children affected or infected by HIV/AIDS continue to be denied access to schools.

Although, the share of child education is the highest amongst all other sectors, the Union Government funding for education has for the last few decades constituted only 10% to 15% of the total public expenditure on education. India remains “at risk of not achieving the millennium development goal of universalization of education by 2015” and has already failed to achieve the goals it had set for itself in the Tenth Five Year Plan of - All children in school by 2003; all children to complete 5 years of schooling by 2007; investment of US$ 1223 million - 1333 million (Rs. 55-60 thousand crore) over 5 years.

One in every 10 children is born with, or acquires some physical, sensory or mental impairment by the first year of life. Based on this estimate the world population of disabled children is placed around 140 million, of which 25 million are in India. According to the Census Report, amongst all persons living with disability, 35.9% (46,38,26,702) are children and young adults in the 0-19 age group. Three out of five children in the age group of 0-9 years have been reported to be visually impaired. Movement disability has the highest proportion (33.2%) in the age group of 10-19. This is largely true of ‘mental’ disability also. However, they continue to be deprived access to education and other opportunities as adequate measures for “inclusion” do not exist.

What is a matter of even greater concern is that under-spending the financial resources provided for children is a recurrent feature. The actual expenditure in all the years has been less than the allocations. Clearly, even the small budget share for children remains unspent. Across the four sectors within budget, under-utilization of resources stands at an average of 1.57% during the period of study for which figures are available. What may appear to be a small amount when taken as a percentage, actually comes to millions of rupees in absolute terms. Moreover, within the budget certain sectors have always shown under-spending, these being health and protection. This under-utilization of funds – a recurrent feature that prevents the benefits of financial allocation from reaching children – is a serious matter that often gets glossed over.

This string of facts and figures boils down to one conclusion. The current state of children is not just because of a lack of funds but a lack of focussed planning. The government is answerable to people who voted and also the people who didn't, the mass of population aged under 18. Can we not speak on their behalf and seek serious welfare measures for children?

Workshop Diaries

We have concluded the first phase of our school workshops. We have covered a good range of MCD schools. The two stories shared here are also two first experiences. The first post by Shubham is on the first ever workshop of Manorath. The second post by Gehena is her first workshop.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
By Garima Shukla and Shubham Kalyan Aggarwal

Our first school workshop was conducted on 25th July No. 1 MCD school, Dakshinpuri . It was nice to see months of meetings and hard work finally bearing fruit :). There were indeed a few glitches, but if there is so much learning and fun such hurdles can be easily overcome. Let me take you through the day's events :

The workshop began at 11:00 am when an anxious Manorath team was greeted by an equally anxious student body of the school.

Once the children were seated [with a lot of help from the teachers :)], the skit began. Sakshi, the Madari, enthralled the bunch of young girls with her acts while Habiba amused everyone as the lost Jamura.

Bulbul, Shweta, Harpreet, Ankur and many others later joined in to play their respective characters. The children were in awe, everyone standing, craning their necks, trying to get a glimpse of the show.

The girls from classes 4 and 5 were however seated on the 1st floor, and were kept busy by Smita, Bhavay and myself. They sang and talked about their future.

And just to make sure that amidst all the fun we dont lose track of the real idea, it was important that the children be made aware of their rights and hence the CRY anthem followed the skit.

Then started the painting competition. The children were seated in circles and given colors and a plain white sheet, and they were told to put down there imagination on those sheets, and it was awe inspiring to see the creativity that was unleashed in the school hall. The once blank sheets now had houses, trees, kites, little children, tables, clouds, rivers, mountains, flowers, fruits, even rakhees of different colors. We had a tough time choosing winners.

Once the competition was over to hold those little angels back in the room was another challenge.In a room full of more than 300 ppl and fans not working and monsoon not helping us in any way!!

The workshop ended just on time, by 12:30, parents had lined up to take their children back home, and we couldnt hold them back any further :).

Our work though was far from over, because then came the real deal. We had a one to one discussion with the teachers, which was an eye-opener, helped us assess our campaign and we were able to document important results.

Prize distribution was done the following saturday.

TAIMOOR NAGAR WORKSHOP: AN EXPERIENCE TO TREASURE
By Gehena Chauhan

The day began with haggling over ten rupees with an auto walla in NewFriends Colony market. I ended up misplacing my phone in the sameauto. (Should have given him that tenner !!) We proceeded to theTaimoor School in a rickety rickshaw which was on the verge of collapsing due to two very “healthy” Indian girls.Amongst the backdrop of humming noises emitting from the variousclassrooms, the survey sheets, pens and crayons were quicklydistributed amongst all twelve of us Manorath volunteers. We were amix of both experienced volunteers and amateurs, including some likeme who had recently joined and had no clue of what to expect from ourfirst workshop.Nervous and confused with trickles of sweat on my brow, I enteredThird B. Excited eyes peeped out at us as we gave them instructions.To be honest the other more confident, experienced volunteer did that while I merely nodded, smiled and after distributing crayons noddedand smiled a bit more, trying to look important.Soon enough I was assigned a section of my own to interact with - Third A. Asking the girls to draw anything that came to their mind, I watched with envy as they filled their blank sheets with brown mountains, yellow smiling suns , huts, matchstick figures, bluerivers, Indian flags, traffic lights, grapes and mangoes. Being an ardent mango lover, the latter caused my stomach to misbehave and makesome very aggressive audible noises. “Ma’am May I go to the bathroom?” I looked up from my survey sheets,and saw one tiny girl who was clutching her stomach. I clucked sympathetically and gave her my “ever so important” permission. Not even sixty seconds had passed when another voice pitched in “Ma’am mayI go to the bathroom ” I smiled and could see myself years back doing the very same thing. Needing a friend…everywhere. Like most other girls their age, these girls simply loved to talk. I took full advantage of this and tried needling them with questions about their teachers, parents and siblings.I was amused to see some girls trying to paint a rosy, picture -“the food is very nice, the teachers are very good with us”. Whereas others would instantaneously spill the beans and complain-“No, the food is not nice and I was hit by the teacher.”A gang of concerned girls stumped a volunteer ten years elder to them“Bhaiya what do you want to be when you grow up?”. Another was advised a career “Didi, you are very pretty. Please join Bollywood ”. Onevolunteer felt appreciated when he was declared the class’s favourite teacher only to realize that they were doing that to every volunteerthat day. Kids nowadays are either getting older too fast or maybe our generation is getting too slow.At the back of their drawing sheets, the children were asked to write their name, Father’s name and his occupation. This one girl told me that she did not know her father’s occupation. When asked why, shetold me that her father had expired and in a matter-of-fact manner added that even her partner had lost her father. On the other hand, I later found out how a girl in ‘fifth standard’ burst out in tears at the mention of her late father.This incident taught me that maturity is irrespective of age.When I had selected the three best drawings I went to the class anddistributed them. Each girl looked at me with hopeful eyes, expecting me to say her name. Since there were only three prizes, I had to givethe rest verbal consolation as to how each drawing was very specialand each of them were winners. One volunteer shared with me that a teacher had suggested to him that we should be distributing prizes to all the children.One face lingered in my memory long after the workshop. One girl asked me if she could write her mother’s name as she only knew her spelling. But she got stuck on her occupation. I asked her politely if she was a housewife. “No”, she replied, “My mother has been sick for many years. So what is her occupation?” Coincidentally she had come First. I tried to imagine the moment when this talented, soft spoken girl would have shown her prize to her mother. As for my prize, I didn’t get a pencil box or a certificate but what I got was a snapshot of smiling faces and lingering memories and I knewI wouldn’t have missed the Taimoor Nagar school visit for the world.The workshop wrapped up with a few of us going back to New Friends Colony trying to find my phone and then celebrating the lost phone atAl Bakes’ with shvarmas and mayonnaise .

This article was compiled taking help from the experiences shared by fellow volunteers-Archana, Harpreet, Ashutosh, Mridul, Gaurav, Gaurab, Tullika, Niyati, Subhash, Menakshi, AND Abhilasha.

I’d like to thank my best friend Anchal and her mother for their invaluable suggestions.

REACHING OUT TO THE MARGINS

Amongst the various causes behind India’s innumerable issues of social concern, unequal distribution of wealth or economic disparity is one of the major impediments when it comes to education. Where a metropolitan child gets fancy school accessories at the beginning of a new session at school, it is the deprivation of the same and much more which becomes the cause of dropping out of school for many in economically and socially inferior sections of the nation.

In such a scenario, it is not necessary that the contributors have to be million rupees worth corporate firms or international organizations. Initiatives taken by local communities and well to do schools in the metros can be yielding, if done with diligence and integrity.

It is said that education is not the answer to the question but the means to the answer to all questions. Identifying this as the launch pad for a wholesome qualitative education, UNICEF in collaboration with central and several state governments has kick-started a wide spectrum of innovative programmes. Supplementing the government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, GOI-UNICEF Elementary Education Programme focuses on enhancing schools effectiveness, eliminating gender and social disparity and reinforcing the resource base to confirm an emphatic scrutinization of the education system. When 13 students from the Valsad district of Gujarat wanted to shift from private schools to schools where ADEPTS (Advanced Education Performance through Teacher Support) supported by UNICEF was running, it was realized that when teachers are personally involved in improving the minimum basic conditions of the school system, students get attracted towards studies. Dr.Yogendra Mathur, UNICEF Representative of Gujarat said about their recent initiative that performance standards have been designed in a manner which caters to the expectations of the community.

Similar results were observed last year in the tribal regions of Orissa where the local schools were encouraged to integrate traditional methods of learning to increase their student base. SRUJAN, a special scheme under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and District Primary Education Project (DPEP) is founded on the idea of community building to develop education in socially marginalized regions of the country. Replacing rote learning which makes education a dead weight carried by students with innovative ways of teaching originating from their vested tradition and culture such as story telling reiterates the idea voiced by George Bernard Shaw – “What we want to see is a child in pursuit of knowledge, not knowledge in pursuit of the child.”

In a country which is characterized by startling gender bias, overcoming caste and class barriers without shunning gender discrimination would be a damp squib. Despite a surge in literacy rate from the 1950s, 90 million females are still illiterate. Therefore, it is important to realize the urgency of increasing the strength of girl students and their retention in the schools. Causes like lack of proper sanitation and awareness of hygiene maintenance during menstruation become the defining reasons for dropping out of schools. In association with TVS, UNICEF has launched sanitary napkin vending machines in the schools of Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu. This initiative, along with the rest of the programmes, can act as a source of inspiration for various flourishing schools in modern cities. They can participate in gender sensitization campaigns and weekly or monthly trips to government-run schools can be arranged where students from different stratum of society can interact and impart knowledge. The way Muslim girls in Lucknow ghettos put forward a manifesto which demanded relocation of schools near home, proper sanitation facilities in schools and a discussion in parliament on children issues, other states can follow suit

In addition to this, metropolitan schools respective of their geographical location can plan awareness campaigns in their district schools. Educational fairs can be organized by them where the district schools students could be invited to interact with their counterparts. Experiences like these for the students will teach them something which is difficult to learn in the four walls enclosed classrooms. Cultivation of such a symbiotic relation can become the foundation of a refined education system, characteristic of a healthy teacher-student relationship and burgeoning inquisitive minds.

When talking about quality education, the role of a teacher is the mainstay of such a project. Without the engagement of teachers, from taking a personal interest in the development of the students to making the classroom an enjoyable learning experience, the picture of a quality education system remains incomplete. Sometimes it is the lack of resources and infrastructure which cripples the teachers from giving their best. A substantial amount of their time and energy goes into doing work other than teaching. In such cases, conditioning of teaching and management skills of the teachers becomes a core imperative. Different schools, regions and communities have different and distinct requirements. First a clear identification, and then a systematic meeting of these requirements is what is needed to be initiated. This is what lied at the heart of the programmes started by UNICEF. If the same could be realized by the rest, one can only imagine the range of significant results it will bring with itself.

By :-
Harpreet Bhullar

Manorath Starts A New Venture -- School Workshops

Manorath has now entered in a new engagement to take its campaign to new heights.These workshops have already begun after seeking formal permissions from the MCD authorities.
The workshop begins with a fun filled, entertaining skit where the children are encouraged to come to school regularly and where they are informed about their rights. It is followed by a song sung by volunteers on child rights. After the skit and the song, there is a engagement with children in various ways such as colouring, painting activities While these students absolutely enjoy and loose themselves in the world of creativity and colour, for the students of senior classes we prefer a one to one interaction. The volunteers talk to the children about various things like about how important is education for all of them and how vital it is to continue their studies. They ask them questions about themselves, what is their favourite subject and probably some knowledge based questions..maintaining the fun quotient of course!!
In the meanwhile the volunteers also talk to the teachers about various the school or probably if they are facing any problem in the there. The idea is to break the ice and let them know that we are there to support them in case of any trouble. Pointers like school facilities and infrastructure are also noticed so that any lack in the same can be highlighted to the concerned school authorities. Finally a summary report of all the observation is made.

As of now there have been 3 successful school workshops (details of which you can read in the next posts) and there are many more to be held.We hope that Manorath finds success in this new beginning.